The present invention relates to lamp ballasts. It finds particular application in simplifying lamp ballast circuitry through the use of application specific integrated circuits (ASICs) and will be described with particular reference thereto. It is to be appreciated, however, that the present invention is also applicable to other circuits as well as lamp ballasts, and is not limited to the aforementioned application.
Typical lamp ballasts driven off of a direct current (DC) bus signal include a pair of transistors that convert the DC signal to an alternating current (AC) signal for driving a lamp operably connected to the ballast. This is typically done with similar transistors such as bipolar junction transistors (BJTs), and will include a base drive transformer and a diac starting circuit. Such a circuit topology is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,847,175, issued Jan. 25, 2005 to Nerone, which is incorporated by reference herein in its entirety.